


a stranger to my skin (but now I’m braver in my bones)

by mimosaeyes



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: (for the memory loss thing), Fix-It, Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 11:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11966412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimosaeyes/pseuds/mimosaeyes
Summary: There is no rational, scientific explanation for why Artemis begins to remember.Or: Holly is the last puzzle piece to fall into place.Post-series coda for Artemis’s birthday (1 September), and some closure.





	a stranger to my skin (but now I’m braver in my bones)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from little light by Lewis Watson.
> 
> There’s probably huge implications on fairykind and humankind that I glossed over here. It’s not that they’re not happening. It’s just that _The Last Guardian_ felt like it was racing along at the end, so I wanted a space for the characters to breathe. Or in Holly’s case, to yell at Artemis a little :P

There is no rational, scientific explanation for why Artemis begins to remember.

He knows this — and goodness knows that even if every cell in his body has been replaced, Artemis Fowl favouring logic and reason over emotion and belief remains a universal constant. But he can’t deny the evidence.

Memories are stored in groups of neurons that are primed to fire together in the pattern of the original experience, and the neurons of this strange new body of his (six toes on his left foot?) are insistently naïve. They are not versed in the familiar pathways down which the electrical impulses of a previous lifetime travelled. They have not felt him make choices. They have not felt him make mistakes. Physically, he is all but a blank slate; _tabula rasa_.

And yet.

 

 

 

He gets flashes, see: synaesthetic moments of sudden recollection composed of light and pain and some kind of distant cacophony.

Flash! And he understands why Butler’s breathing sounds so strained sometimes, even if having Kevlar fibres in one’s chest sounds like something out of a science fiction story. Artemis has to take a few steadying breaths himself as the traumatic circumstances under which he learnt Butler’s first name is Domovoi, come back to him.

Or, flash! And the finer points of Swahili syntax and Fortran programming slot into place, sparing him the indignity of having to re-learn any spoken, written, or coding language he knew before. (When he says as much to Juliet, who has just spent the better part of an hour observing Artemis clearly fail to remember how to distinguish between the vaguely similar packaging of his cologne and Angeline’s nail polish remover, she stares at him for a long moment then drawls, “Priorities, man.”)

He confers with Foaly, who theorises about latent Fairy magic in Artemis’s force-grown clone body. After all, the fair folk’s healing always comes in fits and starts, a benign violence rather like that of fireworks. Alternatively: headaches are only to be expected when a supercomputer brain like Artemis’s begins to reboot using new neural networks.

A few more minutes into their call, Foaly breaks off in the middle of preening over his revolutionary work in cloning (who else could he boast to about this illegal undertaking?) to ask him, quite abruptly Artemis thinks, whether there’s anyone else he wants to speak to, while they have a line open.

Artemis raises one thin eyebrow but as he answers in the negative, something niggles in the back of his mind. Foaly is slow to resume his spiel after that. With unusual solemnity he taps at a console off to the side and gives a brief shake of the head, presumably to a display that is out of frame.

For the most part, however, as the initial hours coalesce into days, much of Artemis’s life pieces itself back together. True, his friends and family (what a dizzying notion, that) fit strangely around him at first. When they are in the same room as him, it is as if they do not know where to look, or how to hold their arms. And there is a feathery, wounded softness to Angeline Fowl’s eyes as she beholds her oldest son, who has twice been lost to her and twice come back.

But gradually, he finds the space he used to occupy among all these people who look at him with something he might deign to call love, in certain sentimental moods. Even if that love has of late been overshadowed by bereavement. Even if Artemis’s father still hesitates before giving in to the occasional compulsion to hug him.

It is a delicate thing, this re-belonging. A silly play on words, and etymologically preposterous, but remembering also means re-membering: resuming his place as a member of this strange group of — of outstanding individuals, every one of them.

And even if midway through quizzing Beckett and Myles one day, he finds himself at a loss as to what the capital of Micronesia is (apparently, it’s Palikir), it feels almost inconsequential. These are not the things that matter to this Artemis. These people do. Much as his previous self would shudder to think it, it’s true.

Which is why they don’t push him to partake in anything related to running the Fowl empire, or to accept interviews from the press, who are clamouring for some explanation of Artemis Junior’s return that makes more sense than a miraculous resurrection. Through sheer force of intimidation, sanctioned by Artemis Senior, Butler is even able to stave off Artemis’s flummoxed lawyers. They’ve long been holding off on executing Artemis’s will, and now they are asking, in the strained kind of calm that threatens to break any moment, about procedures to refute Artemis’s state of legal decease.

Such unlikely events are understandably enough to set any attorney, no matter their professionalism, a little on edge.

All these background happenings do not escape Artemis’s notice; for a spell, he simply does not care to act on them. What he does puzzle over is his mother shushing his two younger brothers when they begin to talk about leprechauns, or one time when he enters a room to find Butler just ending a private call to Foaly, then turning to Artemis and deliberately unfurrowing his brow.

Then, seventeen days after he comes back to life, the penny drops.

He is standing in his study when it happens, and his slender fingers pause as they trail over the items on his desk. Unlike all the other times, it does not hurt. It does not come in a flash. Instead it’s more like a wave, one that envelops him but does not provoke a fear that he might drown in it.

“Holly Short,” Artemis says, trying out the sound of the name that has wafted, easy as you please, to the tip of his tongue.

He pauses to correct himself. “Captain Holly Short.” 

Across the room, Butler does not drop the silver tray he is holding, upon which rests a glass of water and an Alka-Seltzer tablet, for Artemis’s headaches.

However, it is a close thing.

 

 

 

Artemis Fowl was born, for the first time at least, in a mansion with high ceilings and echoing rooms, into a world of immorality, order, and discipline. He was groomed to inherit a criminal empire run the same way an expert butcher sharpens a knife — to have a ruthless edge. 

Artemis Fowl was born for the second time amid roses in the fields surrounding Fowl Manor. He came back to himself as his oldest friend called his name, then rode an only slightly reluctant centaur back home while an elf began telling him a story — the story of a ruthless boy genius whose friends, but one above all the others, wore down his jaggedness and fixed his broken bits. 

Only, exhausted and weak in body, he fell asleep before he could hear much of it.

After he wakes up, he asks about the technology behind his obviously cloned body. He clings to science, he clings to the facts. Because they do not lie; but oh, how they can omit. How they may deceive.

 

 

 

“It’s about time,” Holly Short grouses when Foaly tells her the news, but he can see her relief and thankfulness. Her very shoulders seem lighter.

“Don’t start thinking I’ll come running whenever you summon me,” Holly Short warns first thing after Butler closes the door, leaving her and Artemis alone in his study. 

The second thing Holly says is, “Thought you’d gone and forgotten me for good, Arty,” and it’s the familiar nickname that seals the deal, that tips him over the edge into complete conviction.

He crosses the room in quick strides and hugs her.

He does not tell her that even though he has two blue eyes now, he could never forget her, not really. He does not tell her that she will always be a part of him. He wants to, though; and that, too, is frightening.

Holly, for her part, is so startled by the uncharacteristic display of affection that she gapes and freezes up for a good few seconds before hugging back.

“Did I really lie to you about Spelltropy to save my mother?” Artemis whispers, close by her pointed ear. His voice is full of dread, and now it makes sense: better physical proximity than look her in the eye as he asks, “Did I make you believe you were the harbinger of a plague, to force you to help me?” 

To her credit, Holly reacts to the invocation of that particular fraught moment in their long friendship with a mere catching of her breath. Whichever version of Artemis, he always played hardball. “You were a different person then,” she demurs.

But then she finds that the platitude isn’t enough: it is too brittle in the air between them. While she has the chance, Holly pulls back from the hug in order to hold Artemis by the shoulders and address him face to face. “I need you to understand this, Arty. You were… manipulative. You were sharp, and you were very often cold. But in the end, you were _good_.”

It is the simplest thing in the world to say these words, because they have been running through her mind for the past few months.

Flash. A quiet one, this time, understated and brief: just Holly, drowsy but fighting it, always fighting, as he left her to execute his great plan to foil Opal Koboi. And himself telling her… telling her… 

“ _I was a broken boy_ ,” Artemis says slowly, “ _and you fixed me._ ” He remembers kissing her forehead, leaving himself a back door, a way back into life because geniuses are cowards, don’t you know; cowards, all of them. It was easy to pretend to be brave with science backing him up. Easier still to actually feel brave, knowing somewhere in either world — above-ground or subterranean — Holly Short would live. 

Already he is pulling away, regaining his customary sense of composure. She’s let her hands linger on him a shade too long. She drops them, but even as she does, he reaches up and tentatively touches the temple next to her blue eye, the same hue as his own irises. “You keep fixing me,” he murmurs. “Thank you.”

Abruptly he lets his hand drop and moves away, defaulting to what Artemis’s behaviour would typically be like in this situation: standoffish, distant. 

He fiddles with a row of three fountain pens on his desk. There is silence for several beats.

Then Holly huffs and for a moment he thinks, absurdly, that she’s beginning to laugh. But, as usual (and how reassuring that thought is) the elf is simply mad at Artemis. Again.

“You know, for someone who believes in rationality, you sure are dramatic. There were a trillion more reliable ways to leave us a DNA sample. Foaly got, what? Some skin cells and saliva off my forehead. _Trace_ amounts. What if I’d been splattered with mud in the fields? What if I wiped some sweat off my face and _obliterated the possibility of your continued existence?_ ”

Artemis’s voice is steely and flat, but too deliberately so. “Not _continued_. My existence was, well, interrupted. I suppose it has now… resumed.” 

Holly waves her arms about in frustration. “You could have just said, ‘Hey, off to save the world, only my soul is going to survive the attempt but no worries, you can just grow me another body while I _hold my consciousness together by sheer force of pigheaded will._ ’ But nooo, you had to go for the theatrics.” 

“Holly—” Artemis starts to protest, but she stops him with a look.

“I’m just saying, there were easier ways to ask to… to be fixed,” she spits out, using his own word.

“I didn’t ask!” Artemis yells suddenly, and his volume surprises both of them into silence.

Butler shifts his weight from one foot to another out in the hallway, letting them both hear the scuffing of his shoes. _Do you both need a time-out?_ they say.

“I didn’t ask,” Artemis repeats, more quietly now. He leans back against his desk and rubs his eyes. “I didn’t want to ask. I… I wanted to leave it up to you. A ‘just in case’.”

“Just in case of what,” Holly says flatly. “In case we needed you?”

Artemis flashes her a look, just then, that’s too vulnerable. She looks askance and has to deliberately call the sharpness back into her voice. “I would’ve thought the great Artemis Fowl at least arrogant enough to assume we would need him to help rebuild fairykind and humankind.” 

Artemis blinks rapidly, staring at the ground about two feet in front of him. His voice comes out strange, almost choked. “No. I always needed you more than you needed me.” 

Holly doesn’t ask if he means the royal _you_ , or the singular. She doesn’t need to.

“I left the hard part to you. I’m good at breaking things. Not so much at putting them back together. I’m an inventor, not a salvager. I’m a logician. And in the end, I made the easiest choice in the world.”

He doesn’t look up for the longest time.

Then he hears her say, “Well, so did I,” and in that moment he knows exactly what she means.

 

 

 

Honestly, the melodrama of reuniting with Holly is faintly embarrassing at first. They leave the study and find everyone else gathered further along the hallway, far enough that they couldn’t have eavesdropped but close enough to show their investment. 

Holly ruffles Myles and Beckett’s hair, and exchanges formal handshakes with Artemis Senior and Angeline. She punches Juliet in the arm playfully, and embraces Butler as an old comrade.

Artemis stands apart from them all, observing them like they were a tableau, a jigsaw puzzle that is finally complete now that all the pieces are here.

There are still things muddled in his head. Some kind of paradox involving a silky sifaka lemur. Literal demon warlocks and alien locales. But as he stands there, he finds he has another choice, and once again choosing seems the easiest thing in the world.

“Arty! Arty, does this mean you remember everything?” someone asks. He doesn’t need to register who, only that they are calling him over, him.

Because it matters less that he becomes who he was, than that he finds out who he gets the chance to be, now.

There is no rational, scientific explanation for why Artemis begins to remember, but as he smiles and joins his family, he finds he might not need one.

**Author's Note:**

> I read the first five books as a kid and bought the last three as they came out, but didn’t get around to finishing the series until earlier this year. Writers like Colfer are the reason I’ve loved reading all my life.
> 
> Last year, similarly, I did a massive readthrough of the Animorphs books and wrote a character study of Tobias for his birthday. Two trips down nostalgia lane, and two thank-you fics. It feels good to write these purely as tribute, knowing they’ll go virtually unread and unremarked.
> 
> Side note: the moment when Artemis makes the sacrifice in Holly’s place reminds me of _Pacific Rim_ , when Raleigh says, “It’s okay, Mako. I can do this alone. All I have to do is fall. Anyone can fall.” Protect these platonic male/female friendships.


End file.
